A failed IPO, a mess of different owners and failure to innovate killed the search engine

AltaVista is one of those things you either have no idea about, or if you remember it, you thought it was shut down years ago. Surprise!

AltaVista, an early search engine that started in 1995, is still around today. However, these are its end days, as the search market continues to be dominated by the likes of Google (or just Google, actually).

AltaVista is expected to be laid to rest July 8.

AltaVista circa 1999

The archaic search engine started off strong and successful during the Internet boom of the 1990s, but hit some trouble after a failed initial public offering (IPO) back in 2000. The company was supposed to raise $300 million in December 1999 for the expected April 2000 IPO, but cancelled it due to a drop in the Nasdaq Stock Market.

From there, AltaVista went through several acquisitions. It was founded by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1995, which was acquired by Compaq in 1998 and merged with Hewlett-Packard in 2002. Overture Services then bought AltaVista alone in 2003, and Overture was purchaased by Yahoo in 2003.

Aside from failed IPOs and a mess of different owners, AltaVista just couldn't innovate enough to keep up with Google or Yahoo.

DEC certainly did not fail in execution or in bringing innovation to market. They had the fastest CPU in the world. At the time, the best x86 chip from intel was the 32 bit Pentium Pro @ 200 Mhz. DEC was selling the Alpha @ 500 Mhz, and fully 64-bit. No competition!!

DEC was best in class, leading-edge technology right up until 1998 when Compaq bought them out. That's when DEC's tech started getting shelved, and product innovation suffered. Then when HP bought Compaq in 2001, that was the final nail in the coffin.

The EVA SAN product line (mid-level enterprise SAN storage) is the only legacy DEC product line that HP still develops and sells.

I worked for DEC in the '80s and '90s. They made a ton of money in minicomputers and kept about $5B cash in the bank during their heyday. Biggest computer company behind IBM. They tried to break into the mainframe business (VAX9000) but at $1M each became too expensive when compared to the fast emerging workstations, including their own Alpha. At the low-end, they made a PC that was compatible with their own VAX line but not x86. They died as they were squeezed in the middle and replaced by x86 PCs and workstations.

"This is about the Internet. Everything on the Internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can't deal with the Internet, they should shut it off." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis